


Forgotten Wounds

by AssistedRealityInterface



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, Sleeping Together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-13
Updated: 2014-02-13
Packaged: 2018-01-12 06:37:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1183050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AssistedRealityInterface/pseuds/AssistedRealityInterface
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Someone has to pay attention to the fact that Grant Ward's received a serious stab wound eventually, right?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Forgotten Wounds

**Author's Note:**

> Seriously like was anyone going to point out that the guy had a huge fucking gaping knife wound or no? No, probably not.   
> Honestly, I wrote this largely because of that and also some extrapolation on how I feel about Phil and Ward's conversation/current relationship right now. I think there's a lot of discord between the two, not necessarily because of Melinda, but because Grant knows Phil is supposed to be the father figure, and if there's anything he doesn't trust at all, it's father figures. So there's just a lot of animosity that led to their conversation, I think. Among other things. Also, I just like when someone has to patch a hurt lover up, it's a trope of mine.

“You don’t usually sleep in my bed,” Ward said. “What gives?”

Melinda stood in the doorway, watching him.

“I thought…after today,” Melinda said, biting her lip. “I understand it’s been a rough day on both of us. If you don’t want to be alone, I—“

She paused, looking away for a second before exhaling softly and shaking her head. “I don’t want to be alone either.”

Ward paused, remembering the way Phil’s hands had been on her wound; tender and gentle, so full of love, of a storied past he had no part of.

He shook himself off. Jealousy would get him nowhere. She might love Phil, but she’d chosen him, and damn it…

“Come here, Melinda,” he murmured, holding his arms out. “It’s all right. I’m right here.”

She stripped as she walked, climbing into bed with just an undershirt and briefs on by the time she was done. Ward pressed a kiss into her hair.

“Thank you,” he said. “You’re okay. I’m right here. Thank you for staying with me.”

“I should be thanking you,” she murmured. Ward laughed and pressed a kiss to her forehead.

“Let’s call it even, dear,” he said with a smile.

She nodded, settling in bed beside him. He wrapped his arms around her and let her curl against him, the two of them spooning as Ward kissed the back of her neck. He held her and felt her drift off, her breathing relaxed and at ease.

He thought of Coulson coming in and discovering them like this. Would it be enough to make him take him away from Melinda?

Ward held her tight and shook his head. No. He’d be careful. He’d watch himself. He would keep her safe from Phil’s wrath. Fathers were dangerous. Hadn’t he shown them all that already? He’d gotten Skye hurt…

Ward closed his eyes, inhaled slowly, and pressed a kiss to Melinda’s hair.

“It’s okay,” he promised her. “I won’t let anybody take you from me, my love.”

She was asleep, but it soothed Ward enough that he could do the same, his grip on her tight.

…

Melinda awoke and wrinkled her nose. Her shirt was stuck to her, clingy and sticky.

“Did I leave the heat on?” she murmured to herself, lifting her head up. The chill of the room made her wince and duck her head back under the covers. She rolled over slightly, trying not to wake Ward as she put her hand on the sticky patch.

She missed, and her hand slipped on Ward’s arm. Her eyes widened as she sat up in bed. She knew that feeling, the way that her grip had slackened, her fingertips skidding over the skin.

“Grant,” she said, her voice tight and strained with panic, “you’re _bleeding.”_

A thought popped into her head without further warning; finding Grant the way they’d found Skye, blood all over his chest and his body terribly, gruesomely pale.

He would be too heavy. She couldn’t carry him.

Melinda shook off the bile that threatened to rise in her throat as she shook his shoulder. “Grant? _Grant!”_

He opened his eyes slowly, blinking twice at her before yawning. “Melinda? S’something the matter?”

“You’re _bleeding!”_ she shouted. “Get up, you’re hurt, you’ve been injured, when the _hell—“_

“Oh,” Grant said, holding up his arm. Melinda stared, numb, at the deep gash in it that oozed blood, sluggish crimson tears that made her vision swim.

“This?” he said, examining the wound. “This is nothing. It’s not important. It—“

“You’re _bleeding,”_ Melinda hissed. “That’s always important, you ought to know better—“

“Skye got shot,” Ward said. “Skye got _shot_ and Jemma got hurt and you got stabbed, so what right do I have to care about one little cut—“

“I’m not having this argument with you right now,” Melinda snapped. “If you don’t care, fine. But I do. Get up. We’re going to patch this up.”

“You don’t have to—“             

“Don’t tell me what I can’t do,” Melinda said, throwing her shirt off and taking one of his, pulling it on as Ward watched her, a small smile on his face.

“Okay,” he said. “Sorry, ma’am. Won’t happen again.”

“Damn right,” she said, beckoning for him to follow her. He loped after her, holding his arm against his chest. Melinda refused to look at the cut—it was already laid out in garish detail in her mind at a glance. She bit her lip.

“Tell me how you got that cut, Grant,” she said.

“Um,” he mumbled. He took a second—she could hear him chewing on his lip. “It’s stupid, Melinda. I made a mistake. Got in a fight with a few people—the people that chased Coulson and I off the train. Got into an altercation after you went on the roof of the train. I held my own, I promise! But, uhm.”

He paused and cocked his head, thinking. “There were about…five, six men? And one of them had a knife. So I got this.”

“I see,” Melinda said, her voice quiet. “So you received an injury that might impede you in combat and didn’t tell your superior?”

“Coulson and I had bigger things to worry about,” Ward said. “We had no idea where you were. We had no idea where Jemma, Fitz, or Skye were either. It’s fine—“

“It is _not_ fine, you—“

Melinda buried her face in her hands for a second and rubbed her temples. “Do you understand self-preservation?”

“The team comes first,” Ward said firmly. “Always. The mission, the team, then myself. I can take care of myself.”

He paused and laughed, quiet and bitter. “Besides, according to Coulson, that’s the only way I’m going to be allowed to stay with you. I’d take a hell of a lot more than a stab wound to make that happen.”

Melinda whipped around and gave him a sharp look. “Grant? What did Coulson tell you?”

The color drained from his face entirely as he bit his lip. “Ma’am, it’s not really my place to—“

“Don’t you ‘ma’am’ me right now,” Melinda snapped. “What the fuck did that idiot tell you?”

Ward flinched, looking away. Melinda sighed. “I’m not angry at you. I’m going to knock his teeth down his throat once Skye’s safe and sound, that’s all.”

“It, um, he, um,” Ward said, his throat tensing up as Melinda opened the door to the lab. “I just—I just said we’d never, you know…flaunted our relationship, or, ah, done…things…on the Bus, and he said—“

He rubbed his temples. “He said it was a breach of protocol and I couldn’t screw up or he’d take me away from you. He’d take me away from you, and Jemma, and you, and Fitz, and you, and Skye, and _you—“_

“That son of a bitch,” Melinda breathed, herding Ward onto the examination table as she pinched the bridge of her nose. “I should just punch him now. I really, really should.”

“No, it’s okay—“

“It is not okay,” Melinda said firmly. “He frightened you. He deliberately tried to make you think it would be easier to walk away from me.”

“It’s fine,” Ward said. “I wasn’t planning on doing it either way.”

She looked up at him, meeting his gaze. She had to look away after a second—it was like staring directly into a solar eclipse. The love in his eyes made her heart ache as she picked up a tube of medi-gel and unscrewed the lid.

“First off,” she said, “he was banking on the fact you’ve never had a relationship before. I’m assuming that’s true.”

Ward’s face flared as he shrugged. “Um.”

“So, yes,” Melinda said with a fond little smile. The smile faded as she took a swatch of gauze and coated it in peroxide.

“First off,” she said, scrubbing the blood around the wound off his skin as Ward bit his lip, “he’s lying to you. S.H.I.E.L.D. agents screwing one another has been happening since the days of Director Carter. I should know. It’s not a ‘breach of protocol.’ How the hell do you think Victoria Hand would still have a _job,_ let alone Level 8 clearance, if that was true?”

Ward actually laughed at that. Melinda smiled. “I promise, you’re fine. I mean, for the sake of the mission, we need to stay focused and on-target, but that’s for the sake of the other people on this team and whoever—or whatever—we’re trying to protect. Not for some bullshit protocol.”

“I…” Ward trailed off, biting his lip. “But, Melinda?”

“You want to know why he’d lie,” Melinda said. Ward nodded. She sighed.

“Because Nick is distant,” Melinda said. “And he didn’t know why, and now he _does—_ and it _destroys him,_ and he has no idea how to bridge the gap between them the same way that damn idiot built a bridge between life and death for him. So he’s lost his best friend—the friend he thought, despite the fact that he was Director now, that he’d have forever. He misses being Nick’s one good eye.”

Melinda sighed and rubbed the medi-gel over Ward’s wound, examining it as she swabbed before picking up a set of sutures. “And Victoria—Victoria’s not the type to show how much she missed him. Or tell him that she almost killed Nick next to his empty casket.”

“Jesus,” Ward breathed. Melinda shook her head.

“Well, we both did,” she said. “We were angry. Can you blame us? But…Tori laughs it off, keeps her distance, because she doesn’t know what to do with the emotional can of worms she might open if she tries to get closer to Phil right now. And the Avengers can’t know he’s alive. So all he’s got left is me.”

Ward took it in as Melinda sewed up the wound, a frown deepening her features. “Believe me, I’m not happy about it. What he did to you was cruel and unnecessary. I’m a grown woman, I can manage my own love life. But he was afraid you’d hurt me. That you’d break my heart. And he couldn’t handle that. He just wants me to be happy, the idiot.”

She finished up the stitches, cleaning around the wound one more time before picking up a roll of bandages. “So as long as you’re willing to stay, there’s nothing he can do. And he knows that. And that’s what made him react like that. I don’t…think he understands.”

“Understands what?” Ward asked. Melinda unrolled a strip of the bandages, winding it around his arm. For a few minutes, she said nothing, wrapping up the wound. Ward started to fidget.

“You’ve had to have received this wound approximately ten hours ago,” Melinda said. “It was deep enough I used both medi-gel and stitches. It had to have hurt. And yet, you ignored it.”

“Well, I had…I had to take care of the team,” Ward said desperately. “Don’t you get it? I have to make sure they’re safe! I mean, this team—this team’s all I’ve got.”

Melinda smiled and shook her head. “That’s it, then. What he doesn’t understand. That you two are coming from the exact same place.”

She took Ward’s hand. “Listen to me, Grant.”

He watched her, completely silent. Melinda squeezed his hand lightly. “I can’t make you care about yourself. But I need you to know I care about you. And that _I_ want you to be safe. And so does everyone else on this team. You’re not the only one carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders, sweetheart. Lighten the load a bit.”

She patted his arm. “And don’t let me see you with an injury like this again. At least, not untreated. Got it?”

Ward blinked twice, tears stinging at his eyes. “Yes, Melinda.”

She made to move her hand away—he kept it where it was. He looked up at her.

“You trust me,” he said. “Right?”

Melinda nodded. Ward bit his lip. “Then…then would you trust me more if I took care of myself? Would you, um…let me help you when you got hurt?”

She met his gaze and sighed. “Oh, _Grant.”_

“I will,” he said. “I will, I’ll let you know when I’m hurt and—and things like that, I promise—“

She hugged him tight, hushing him and kissing his forehead. “Ssh, relax. I was letting Phil stitch me up as a peace offering. I knew he was on edge. And I was hoping it would placate him a bit. You’re fine, Grant. It had nothing to do with you, or how much I trust you.”

He closed his eyes and steadied his breathing as she held him.

“Okay,” he finally said. “Sorry I bothered you.”

“You’re not bothering me,” Melinda said. “No secrets, all right? You can be honest with me. I’m honest with you.”

“I, um, okay,” Ward said, nodding in agreement as he watched her clean up the supplies she’d used. For a few minutes, she worked in silence.

“Okay, then I’ll be honest right now,” Ward said. “I’d really…really like it if you stayed in my bed from now on. Just, you know, to sleep.”

“Oh? And what about Phil?” Melinda said, turning to look at him. Ward shrugged.

“You sleeping next to me doesn’t compromise anything,” he said. “So if it bothers him, that’s his problem. And I’m not worried about him. Just you. Only you.”

Melinda put the roll of bandages back in one of the desk drawers with a soft, metallic click before crossing the room and embracing Ward, hugging him tight and pressing a kiss into his shoulder.

“Of course,” she said. “Come on, then. Let’s go back to bed.”

Ward nodded, lifting her up into his arms. She looked down at him and his injured arm, raising an eyebrow. He smiled sheepishly and set her down, kissing her forehead.

“Some other time,” he said, letting her lead him into the bedroom by the hand, closing the door behind them and holding her close.

She held him that night, her body warm against his, her hand on his wound, watching over it. Ward slept more soundly than he had in years with the feel of her hand on his body, her pulse beating against his skin, lulling him into a deep, dreamless sleep.


End file.
